The F-word You Should Embrace
Everyone has an opinion on failure.
One of the more common ones, loved by the military and motivational speakers everywhere, is “failure is not an option.” As in, “you will try, and you will succeed, no matter what.” While it certainly feels like a sentiment that ensures success, I believe it is wrong.
In so many situations, failure is absolutely an option, especially if you want to learn, grow, and succeed.
Most of the time, we try to avoid failure as much as possible. We double and triple-check ourselves. We do everything we can to failure-proof ourselves by minimizing our exposure to the novel and the up-to-now unknown, setting the bar to new experiences as low as possible.
This means we end up shortchanging ourselves, all in the name of ensuring we don’t fail.
In short, we are failing at failure and failing ourselves.
Reframing our ideas about failure gives us permission to try new things, to confidently leave our comfort zones, and to become a bigger, bolder version of ourselves. Each time we fail at something, we receive the gift of new insights and very much needed data points. Rather than something to fear, each failure is a chance to gather additional information and improve.
As adults, we have come to believe that we have to be successful immediately at everything we try, but as kids, we didn’t see it that way. As kids, we were always trying new things and failing, then trying again.
Failure was the way we learned, we just didn’t use the F-word.
Think of a baby, on their way to becoming a toddler. Moving from the world of crawling to toddling is an exercise in repeated failure. There is a lot of wobbling, a lot of tentative steps, and a lot of plopping down when gravity does its job. There is repeated experimentation, data point gathering, readjustment, and retrying. Over and over and over.
But you know what you never see? Giving up.
In the vast and ever-changing history of the world, there has never been a baby that has given up trying to walk. A baby, who after falling and failing a few times, just stayed on the ground and said, “Yeah, I’m OK here. The whole walking thing isn’t for me. I’m a failure. I’m not going to try anymore. I’m good right here.” It has never happened. And it never will.
Even at that age, what looks like failure is just a series of experiments resulting in data points, pointing out what works and doesn’t work. Each unsuccessful attempt at bipedalism provides the baby with new information to use to readjust and try again.
Each failure isn’t personal or emotional, it’s just factual information.
The baby has learned that gravity works (it IS a law after all,) and what they just tried wasn’t successful enough to break the law yet.
The key to embracing failure is to see it as an experiment that allows you to gather information you can apply to the next experiment.
Years ago, I was a member of Toastmasters, diligently working to improve my speaking skills. Part of the Toastmasters process included speaking contests designed to push members out of their comfort zones and strengthen their speaking abilities.
The contest format started small. If you won the contest at your home club, you then competed at the Area Contest. If you won there, you moved up to the Division Contest. If you won there, you continued up the line of even more competitive contests culminating in the World Championship of Public Speaking.
I competed in the contests. Not to victoriously conquer all the other contestants with my (self-proclaimed) amazing skills. No, I competed as a way to experiment and gather data points on my speaking.
If I succeeded with a speech, I knew that speech was a successful experiment. If I didn’t win and advance to the next level, I knew something, maybe the speech content, or my presentation skills, needed work.
Luckily, there were always contest judges willing to fill me in on what they felt wasn’t working. They were happy to provide me critical feedback, all of which became data points to help me improve.
Their criticism, while sometimes cringe-worthy (I really rock back and forth when telling a story?), gave me insights that might have taken me years to figure out on my own. My experimenting and failing was a gift, but only if I chose to look at it that way.
And I did.
Was I disappointed when I didn’t win? Of course, but I never saw this as a failure, just an experiment designed to give me data points I could use going forward.
Embracing the F-word
Failure to achieve your stated goal is, for the most part, never a bad thing (this excludes things like skydiving, piloting airplanes, or performing brain surgery.) Failure just means you didn’t have all the information or all of the skills at that point in time. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever. You just need to experiment more.
If you consistently apply the new information you receive from each experiment, you will improve. Then you, like the baby, will eventually (figuratively) learn to walk and then run.
Contests, of course, aren’t the only way to experiment and gather data points. Trying anything new qualifies. This could be as simple as your first attempt at an original recipe for dinner, trying a new skill at work, or experimenting with a new fitness class. If you experiment and results aren’t perfect, you aren’t a failure, you’ve just been given more information to work with.
Remember, as adults, we think we have to succeed right away, but that’s not really the way things work.
Your initial experiment has graciously provided you with lots of new data. Maybe the recipe wasn’t spicy enough, the new skill at work didn’t resonate with your team, or the fitness class made you feel uncomfortable and uncoordinated. It’s up to you to decide how to use this information.
Try the recipe again and double the spices, tweak the work skill in one slight way, or decide that you’ll give the class three more chances, and if you don’t start loving it, you can give up and try something else. Iterate using the information you received from your less than stellar experiment results.
One thing you haven’t done? Failed.
You’ve just found out what does and doesn’t work for you.
Embracing failure and viewing it as an experiment is also a great pressure reliever. Trying new things with no expectation of perfection, allows you to be more present with the experience and makes the result less precious.
No matter what happens, you win by gathering insights, data points, and information. Use all of that to your advantage. Failure, in the form of experimentation, is ALWAYS an option.
